


The Order of Operations

by TriplePirouette



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They hadn't talked, not really, but he'd been adamant that they needed to seek the shelter of his cabin as soon as possible. She had assumed that he was shaking with excitement of getting his power back, but halfway through the forest she was having second thoughts.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Order of Operations

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Schmoo999 as part of my 100 Follower Fandom Fling based on the image below. (Image credit to pinterest) This also basically sorts out my finale feelings fairly well. I tried very hard to not read anyone else's post-ep so that this would be mine alone. I'm actually looking forward to a million and one- post-eps back at Gold's cabin. :) 
> 
> AN2- This is a bit embarrassing, but if anyone notices any major tense problems, please let me know and I'll fix it. Somehow this came out in both present and past tense and I did my best to fix as many errors as I found, leaving it all in past tense. I'm not quite a hundred percent the last few days due to a stomach bug, so my editing process is a little shabbier than normal. Thank you in advance :)

 

When Belle woke up she was still in the horrid, scratchy scrub dress and ridiculous tights. The moonlight streamed through the crack of the cabin's little window, just enough so that the room with the old, creaky bed wasn't quite pitch black. Belle sat up, the springs moaning with age and neglect, as the blanket fell from around her shoulders.

 

They hadn't talked, not really, but he'd been adamant that they needed to seek the shelter of his cabin as soon as possible. She had assumed that he was shaking with the excitement of getting his power back, but halfway through the forest she was having second thoughts. His eyes were darting around far too fast in the leftover purple haze, his hand on her back guiding just a little too tightly. She had never, never seen him like this. He had almost looked... nervous. That, more than anything that had happened that day, unsettled her.

 

So Belle followed him quietly, his shaking hand on her back, until they made it to his cabin in the middle of the woods. She was only somewhat surprised to find it ancient and neglected, some of the surfaces still filled with dust, but freshly stocked with a few bags of basic groceries and a handful of other necessities. He made her soup and wouldn't stop fussing as he searched for something better than just his pocket comb to help tame her hair, which he never quite found. Not a word of consequence slipped from between their lips as she watched him make the bed and put away the groceries that evening. When she yawned just as the sun was setting, just one tiny little yawn, he led her to the bedroom and tucked her in tight.

 

She fell asleep knowing that he'd been avoiding her. She'd known him long enough to know that much at least. Even this afternoon when she hadn't remembered him he'd hustled her out of the shop, through side streets and into the forest, with nary a word.

 

Belle gently let her feet fall to the floor, the worn bottom of her socks slipping on the hardwood. Her body felt odd after sleeping on something that wasn't a harsh, unforgiving slab. She padded to the door, opening it a crack. Rumpelstiltskin sat with his back to her in a wood frame chair in the dark, staring at the cold, empty fireplace. A half-empty handle of rum sat by his feet, a tumbler in his right hand with just a few drops of the rich alcohol left.

 

“Why don't you start a fire?” She asked, leaning into the door frame.

 

He lifted his left hand, flicking a finger toward the lamp and lowering it as the light bulb sprung to life. With the light she could see the way his skin glittered. It wasn't quite what it looked like in her memory, but rather like that old glittery roughness was slithering beneath the surface of his human skin, waiting to break free. He turned and looked at her over his shoulder, his expression blank but somehow still sad as the effect glittered up his neck, but his face was untouched by the magic. “You've never spent much time on the run, have you my dear? Building a fire would be like building a great big arrow pointing at yourself and shouting, 'here I am.'”

 

Belle slipped into the room, small steps only. She was still getting used to all this space: it felt like that cell was all she'd known for lifetimes and she could pace from end to end in four small strides. She padded softly over, his eyes on her every step as she sat gently with her back against the hearth, looking straight at him with her knees tucked into her chest. “Why are we hiding?”

 

He sighed, looking down into his empty tumbler. “Belle,” he said, meaning to start to unravel the threads of thought in his mind, but he can't get past that one word, that name that he has not said in so many, many years. “Belle,” he said again, letting it sit on his tongue, his eyes flicking towads her, just to make sure she was still there.

 

She stared at him in the waning lamp-light. The glittery magic beneath his skin gave him an odd aura of transcendence, but his eyes- they were lost and sad and _human._ It's the first time that she's ever seen them like that, seen the way that they could betray his emotions, and her heart ached for the both of them. “Tell me, Rumpelstiltskin, tell me why?”

 

He licked his lips as he snapped out of his reverie, leaning over to refill his glass from the bottle with the monster on it. The smell wafted over to her and she could tell that the spirits were strong. “Tell you what?” His voice was dismissive, like he didn't know what she was asking.

 

She knew he knew. Her chin wavered, just a little bit, but she could not let this pass. “I don't want to go back to that place- that cell, that dungeon- but don't think I won't walk away from you again if you've learned nothing.”

 

She caught his gaze, and in his human eyes she thought she saw understanding dawn. He swirled the brown liquid in his glass, looking at it rather than her as he tried to find the right words. “I thought you were dead, that's why I didn't come for you.”

 

She scooted to her knees and crossed the space between them, resting with her hand on his knee. Her voice was, surprisingly, not accusatory. “That's not what I wanted to know.” She took the glass from his hand and puts it on the floor next to her. She lifted his fingers in hers, watching the magic stream under his skin. “I want to know...” Belle sighed, linking her fingers with his. “Why did you choose the power over me? It's why I left you.”

 

His head leapt up sharply, his fingers griped hers and he sunk to his knees beside her without a hint of pain. “Belle,” he breathed out, his voice light and astonished, his face tightened in confusion, “I didn't.”

 

She shook her head, looking at the floor between their knees for just a moment before she finally met his eyes again, “Then you'll have to explain it to me, for I truly don't understand.”

 

They were still in the silence for long seconds where even she feels an ache in her knees, but he didn't so much as shift. He just stared at her, his head shaking and his eyes taking her in like a drowning man gasping for air. “I don't know how to explain it.” He finally answers, his forehead wrinkled up tight and his eyes dark and deep.

 

She tilted her head, used to his difficulties with emotion, but not used to seeing the pattern of it on his face. She lifted a hand, drawing it over his temple and down his cheek. “Well you must try. Even True Love must be fought for.”

 

His head pressed just a bit into her palm before he turned and kissed the swell just below her thumb. He pretended not to hear the gasp she let out, instead standing and pulling her with him to the table where he sat her in the matching wooden chair. He dragged his own over along with his glass of rum and set himself down heavily next to her. He traced the canals of magic running through his veins as he talked. “My son, my boy, I told you I lost him. I lost him to this world, many, many hundreds of years before I met you. It was... my fault.” He nearly jumped when her hand reached over, taking his. She was listening with her head tipped to the side like she had in so many of his memories. She nodded, just enough, for him to continue. “I took the magic to save him from the first Ogre War. I did, I saved him and I ended the war and saved, so, so many people. But I couldn't let the magic go. It was... intoxicating like nothing I'd ever known.” He reached out with his free hand and swirled the glass of alcohol in softly scraping rings on the table. “It was like the most addictive drug. It is an addictive drug.”

 

Belle pulled away, her hands in her lap, disappointment falling over he features. “Are you trying to say-”

 

“No!” He turned, lifting her hands from her lap and holding them tightly in his. “No, I'm not saying I'm powerless, or trapped, or addicted beyond hope. No.” He took a second, pulling her hands up to rest over his heart. She could feel it beat in the silence. “I thought my power could help Bae, could protect him and give him what a poor, lame spinner never could.” He looked away from her, his voice crumbling into sandpaper. “That's who I was, you know. I had no wealth, no family, no upbringing, Without my strength for farming I could only spin...”

 

She reached out with her palm, turning his face back to her. “Sounds like a man who wanted the best for his son. Tell me more.”

 

This time he didn't take her palm from his face, he just let her slip to his shoulder as he talked. “I was wrong. He hated the magic, hated what it did to me. It made me... cruel.” He winced as he said the word, and her heart clenched. She remembered the stories of him in their old world and wondered how many of them were true. “He sought help from the Blue Fairy. She gave him a portal to another world: one use, one way. I didn't know, I didn't understand that it was a one time event. I was still too much of a coward to follow him, to lose the power that had intoxicated me with magic and status. I... I let go, and didn't go with him. He didn't tell me I only had one chance. I didn't know...”

 

He reached over and took a gulp of the alcohol, liking the way it burned down his throat. It took the sting of tears away, gave him something to look at other than Belle's clear and understanding eyes. He looked down into the cup, wondering how much more he would need to drink to feel anything other than the burn of the alcohol in his throat with the magic thrumming through his system. He never could quite get drunk with the magic. “The curse was created not to destroy happiness- that was Regina's desire- but to find Baelfire in this world. But I cannot do that without magic. I cannot even begin to fathom what happened to him in this vast world nearly thirty years ago. It would take more lifetimes that I could ever imagine to find him without magic, and then it would be too late.”

 

After a moment, he felt Belle scoot closer, her hand tightening on his as he peeled his eyes away from his glass. Her hair was somewhat tamed thanks to his tiny, ineffectual comb, but nowhere near its well-done splendor that he's dreamed of mussing in his darkest desires. Her clothes were horrid. At first daylight he decided he would conjure her whatever she wished and burn the horrid rags, the symbols of her imprisonment. But her smile, oh, it still shined so brightly even if her eyes were just a bit sunken and her cheeks a bit sharper and her lips just a shade paler. Her smile shined like a beacon of light in his life. “Your son came first,” Belle whispered, understanding and compassion coloring her words. “You're not choosing the magic, you're choosing him.”

 

He felt his eyes go wide, he felt the way surprise took over his face even though he didn't want to share the emotions coiling deep in his chest. “Yes. Yes, that's... but there's more.” It was unfamiliar, the way he felt his stomach drop and his chest constrict at the idea of someone, anyone, understanding him. He didn't remember this feeling, but knows he's felt it before. With Belle. Always with Belle. His voice pitched up just a bit, his hands flitting in hers, excitement bubbling up in him. “It's so wonderful, Belle, because Bae, he wanted to save me. He wanted to take away the curse of the Dark One, but we never found a way that wouldn't result in my death.”

 

Her eyes widened, understanding fully dawning for the first time. Suddenly that day in the castle when she kissed him makes so much more sense: the way he reacted, the frightened look on his face, why his power had to be more important to him, even if she knew his heart felt differently. “If I kiss you...”

 

He noded in tiny, jerky movements. “Oh yes. Yes. We must stay here until I can control the magic completely- without it...” He siged, his words looking nearly painful to get out. “Regina has never needed a curse to control her magic, I'm afraid I'm not as skilled without mine, so until I'm ready- we must hide. I cannot protect you otherwise, not only from Regina, but from others who would wish death upon the Dark One and his...”

 

His voice fell away. For all he had said, they still had not yet to discussed anything about the two of them: where they stood, what she wanted and needed now that she remembered. Belle just smiled at him. “And his True Love?”

 

His grin split his face from ear to ear. “Yes, and his True Love.” He reached up and tried to tame her hair behind her ear. “Then,” he continued, softer and slower, “Even if he wishes to not know me, we shall break the curse. I want him to know- to see- that even though I've... disappointed him in the past, I've learned.” He took both his hands from hers and frames her face with them, tipping his forehead down. “I've learned, Belle, and I won't make the same mistake again. I will not choose my power over you or Bae again. But for now... it's a means to the end.”

 

Belle reached up, and when her hand wiped under his eye, he was surprised to see her fingers pull away with moisture on them. She smiled and leaned forward, her forehead meeting his. “It is the means to our happy ending.”

 

He nodded, the sides of his face turning up in a wide smile. “Oh, yes.”

 

They were a hair's breath away, so close that he could smell the staleness of the hospital issue soap on her scrub dress, that he could feel the heat radiating off of her body, that if he just leaned forward... but she pulled back. She didn't pull away far, but enough to confuse him. He leaned back as he licked his lips and stared at her, trying hard not to show the hurt. “Belle?”

 

She shook her head, and just the smallest sadness tugged at the corner of her eyes. “We can't kiss.”

 

His head ticked to the side, a hint of a smirk on his lips. “Why of course we...”

 

She shook her head again and traced the magic with her fingertips as it crept up his throat, just to the very tip of his bottom lip. “It's there, in you already.” She sighed and ghosted her fingers over his lips. “We can't kiss.”

 

His head fell, his shoulders drooping with the weight he had been carrying for too long.

 

* * *

In the morning, she fully expected to see his former form, dragon-skin coat and all, greeting her from the side of a spinning wheel. Instead, she found him still at the table where she left him, still in his same suit, scruffy and rumpled and worn with bags around his eyes, but not one hint of magic flowing beneath his veins.

 

“Rumpelstiltskin?” Belle whispered, slipping forward on her worn socks and brushing her tangled hair back again. The room was lit by sunlight now, but it didn't change the weight of the air around them. She wanted to ask why he hadn't taken on the glittering scales, why his eyes weren't as large and scary as a wolf's, but the stress on his face told her to hold her tongue. Though the handle of rum still sits on the floor and looks as full as it did when she bid him good night, he was still swirling the cup in his hand.

 

He sniffed, tipped his head to the side, and looked up at her. “For all that we said last night, there was one thing I never asked you.”

 

She curled in on herself, pulling her sweater tighter around her. She tossed and turned in the bed, the novelty of the amenities having worn off in favor of the parade of thoughts in her mind about all that he'd told her. She smiled shyly and pushed past him to the small stove and the steaming kettle on the burner. “Well, that can wait, can't it? I haven't had a proper cup of tea in-”

 

“Thirty years.” The words dripped from his lips unbidden as he watched her move around the kitchen.

 

She carefully put the hot kettle down and turned to him, her words stammering a bit. “Thh- thirty years? I was... it was thirty years?”

 

Gold stood, dancing his eyebrows as he tried to sweep it away for the moment, walking past her to place his glass in the sink. “Thirty years, eight months, and twelve days.” He's unprepared for the feel of her body as she collides with him, hugging his back and wrapping her arms about his waist.

 

He turned, ready to drop a chaste, non-true love's kiss in her hair when he truly saw the sight of her. Her hair was back to being knotted and tangled, her smock was skewed and wrinkled, and her tights were sagging. Looking a little lower, he could even see her pinky toe poking out of her right sock. He pulled back, consternation quickly taking over his face as his hands flew around her body, just a few inches shy of touching as he tried to decide where to start. “What?” She asked, trying to read his face.

 

“You look quite the fright, dearie.” He narrowed his eyes and walked around her quickly. “This simply can't stand.”

 

She had the grace to look at least a little put out, but still dragged her hand over his wrinkled shirt. “Well enough, but you're not quite that put together, either.”

 

He stepped back, a wide smile filled his face starting with just the one corner of his mouth. It was a gesture that she was oh, so familiar with and it made her feel so very warm and safe. He swept a low bow with not one inkling of the limp he sported yesterday. “Then permit me, milady?”

 

Belle made a show of smoothing her untamable hair and grabbed the ends of her scrub dress, dipping a very royal curtsey with a sleepy smirk. “You are permitted.”

 

He took her hand and in a cloud of sparkling blue smoke that dissipated as quickly as it came, the clothes she was wearing vanished, replaced by a dress she was much more familiar with: her favorite blue house dress. Likewise, though still very human, he was standing across from her in leather pants, a heavy waistcoat, and billowing golden sleeves with those ridiculous lace up boots. She laughed.

 

It start ed out as a little twitter, just one little bark of laughter, but it grew and she held her hands over her mouth because princesses did NOT guffaw and he was smiling at her and without warning she was crying. She cried big heavy, fat tears and her laughter turned into gasping wails as he pulled her tight into his arms.

 

She felt it only once. The feel of his body under his clothes, the feel of his arms which were so much stronger than they looked, but it felt better than anything she could remember. Even his smell, his scent, reminded her of the dark castle, of the way the roses bloomed just outside the great hall and their scent swept through the cracks in the mortar. He tried to calm her, but he could not. She was letting lose thirty years of emotion, of sitting in a cell blindly while days drifted into months and years and even decades waiting for him to save her and all the while, he thought her dead.

 

That man, the man in white who saved her. He was owed the protection and favor of this magic, and she would make sure he got it. Without him, she could be sitting in that same cell right now, remembering everything and not being able to do anything about it.

 

When she could finally catch her breath, she whispered into the silk of his shirt. “I haven't laughed in thirty years. I know I haven't.”

 

He didn't speak right away, and that scared her, but he held her tight, and brushed her now smooth and tamed hair back and she knew that it was more than he was used to, so she tried to forgive the lack of words. Tucked under his chin, held tight in his arms, nothing much else seemed to matter.

 

When he did speak, she finds she was not prepared for his words. “You know, there is still a question I never asked, and I find it's quite important.” His voice was tight, low, nearly as rough as it was last night talking about his son.

 

“Yes?” She whispered, playing with the edge of his vest.

 

He tilted his head down, burying his nose in her hair. “What is it that you want? You left me. You're under no obligation to come back to me. I must... I must find my son. I must do this. And you must not doubt my love. But I offer you my... protection... my allegiance, no matter what your decision. If you wish to... go to your father, or leave Storybrooke, or... whatever your wishes,” he gulped, and she felt it ricochet through her whole body, “I will honor them.” He took a deep breath. “I did not even ask if... you would be under no... no... obligation... to break my curse after the way I treated you.”

 

Belle slowly wound her arms around him. “You have learned.” He didn't relax n her arms, though, still tightly coiled as a snake ready to strike. “When the time comes, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said, pulling away and looking into his eyes, where, for the first time this morning she can still see the magic swirling deep in them, “I will kiss you. I will help you lift the curse of the Dark One, and most importantly, we will have a happy ending.” She saw more questions in his expression as he looked at her: questions he wanted to ask, things he wanted to know, and she knew, just as wall as if she could see the future, that things will not be easy before their True Love's kiss, but she didn't want the struggling to start in that moment.

 

Right then, she was in her favorite blue dress, with her hair as nice as it has ever been in thirty years, and the man she loved was standing across from her, smiling. “Now how about that tea?” She smiled and took his hands in hers as she stepped out of his arms and toward the stove. “I haven't had a descent cup in long, long time.”  


End file.
